UEFA FFP investigation - CAS decision to be announced Monday, 13th July 9.30am BST

[Fordyboy46]

I can see it changing. Expediency was a reasonable course of action when the stakes were lower. UEFA have just upped the ante and our owners’ pride would be hurt if they rolled over.

Fingers crossed then mate.

 

[tornandfrayed]

Not a fan of her but we should just fuck off the champions league anthem against madrid and play this instead



Or this as they are a Manchester band



Also if they do conspire with bad VAR decisiions and a few sendings off to knock us out at jome anything less than a pitch invasion would be a dissapointment.

If we are going out lets go out in the most city way

 

[Mancity1980]

Does anyone think our owner will think ‘Fuck it, I’ve had enough. The bastards have won’?

It might come to that but only after an incredibly tough, long drawn out battle. I can’t see him throwing the towel in and moving on right now but the exact opposite.

They have put way too much into this to just walk away. Not just financially but politically as well.

 

[urban genie]

Does anyone think our owner will think ‘Fuck it, I’ve had enough. The bastards have won’?

It might come to that but only after an incredibly tough, long drawn out battle. I can’t see him throwing the towel in and moving on right now but the exact opposite.

City is no longer a sole entity, this is a nine club global business, with us as the main team, he ain't abandoning this because some twats in uefa are trying to fuck us over.

 

[Marvin]

I've read some of our (Juve) forum reactions and even we, who are technically your CL rivals, know there's still the CAS appeal to be had and that this decision isn't necessarily what is really going to happen. So I wouldn't start to panic. You'll have your chance at appealing to a serious independent court, which is something very valuable and not to be taken for granted.

In any case, a strong team with a strong management at its core can, in due time, overcome any difficulty and setback thrown their way. Trust me on this.

As for the CL, maybe the threat of not competing in it next year will make the team perform with more hunger in the current one.
I know we don't stand a chance of making it to the final this year, so I wouldn't be particularly opposed to seeing you win it instead of Real, Barça, PSG or Liverpool. I just hope it'll be a better final than last year tbh.

Good comment. The case of Juve is very relevant for City fans now. And Glasgow Rangers. In the scheme of things two years is nothing.

I like a lot of City fans I suspect are awkward sods and chose to support City in some dark times when Man Utd ruled the English football world. None of us are going to be put off by a little adversity. Good can come of it.

 

[Marvin]

They have put way too much into this to just walk away. Not just financially but politically as well.

But the rearmanent was upfront. Sheikh Mansour did actually walk away and instruct City's Chief Eexc to run the club as a self-sustaining business,

We are not being allowed to do so, so if they want war, let's have it.

 

[HelloCity]

 

[BlueMoonz1977]

I've just posted a long reply giving my view on the technical case against us. But everything I've heard suggests that UEFA as an organisation didn't want it to come to this but that representatives of clubs who make up part of that organisation did. Ceferin wa desperately trying to get a deal hammered out late last year. Whether he'd have got that through the AC (which is supposed to be independent of UEFA) is another matter but if he thinks he could have done, then it throws that claimed independence into doubt doesn't it?

You can look at it two extreme ways. One is that UEFA is serious and that will involve a fight to the proverbial death between us and them over this. The other is that it's a carefully staged process between the three main parties, us, UEFA and CAS, knowing that the case will be thrown out at CAS. But even then, the mud they've thrown will stick and we can't afford to ignore that. We have to therefore deal with the elements causing this as they won't go away unless we do.

totally agree PB....your last paragraph hits the nail on the head.

 

[Rammy Blue]

Just watching BBC News and their sports reporter mentioned the deal with Etihad, saying “who as we know are owned by the owners of Manchester City”. This is categorically untrue. It’s shoddy journalism at best, or deliberately misleading at worst.

Told you last night mate, they don’t care about peddling lies. Trial by media done and dusted.

 

[Metalartin]

Good question. We don't really know what UEFA means by this but we know from Der Spiegel that they looked at all the Abu Dhabi sponsorships as part of their original investigation. The concept of applying the market or fair value test only applies if the sponsor is deemed to be a 'related party'. If not, they can pay whatever they want. So if John Wardle had been both chairman of JD Sports and City at the same time, any sponsorship from them would have to be at market value. However Sports Direct, assuming Ashley had not other rleationship with the club, could sponsor our shirts for whatever we agreed, even if that was double or treble what JD Sports had paid. No market value test is applied to non-related parties.

UEFA claimed these companies were 'related parties' but that the Etihad deal would be deemed fair value. However it said that other Abu Dhabi deals weren't. We contested that but it was never tested in court and we voluntarily agreed not to increase those. I think Aabar was ultimately owned by a company chaired by Sheikh Mansour, although that's not enough in itself to prove conclusively that Aabar is definitely a related party. So even if we fully accpeted what UEFA had said (which we didn't) we'd have had to reduce two lesser sponsorships by about £10m or thereabouts, which would have made little impact in the overall scheme of things and certainly wouldn't have led to any further punishment than we actually received.

But I assume at the time UEFA weren't aware that Etihad and the other companies weren't paying the full amount of those sponsorships (although they should have known as that information about Etihad was already in the public domain as part of the Open Skies case in the USA courts). What they seem to punishing us for now is that we used those sponsorships to funnel ADUG money into the club. But if it's not a related party, as we claimed, then that's outside the FFP rules if that's the case. But it entirely depends on who paid the money. If it was the Executive Council, as as the case in the document filed in the New York courts, then that's a completely different matter to the money coming directly from ADUG. There's an email between Simon Pearce & Ferran Soriano where soriano asks Pearce to ask someone called Muhamad (not HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed as they'd never refer to him in that way) to split the remittances into those from Etihad and the other sponsors (which are revenue) from those coming directly from ADUG as equity investment. We don't know exactly who Muhamad is but I'm assuming he's someone in finance at ADUG.

You could read this two ways. One one hand, it's very sensible and allows us to show the monies from sponsors as separate amounts from the monies for, say the CFA build or to cover transfers. Etiahd and the other parties could have sent the money to ADUG, even if some of that was sourced from ADEC (the Executive Council). On the other hand, it could be interpreted as showing that ADUG just paid us a flat remittance that incorporated all the income we needed and got whatever was due from Etihad (£8m out of the full sponsorship, whatever that was, £40m or £50m).

Der Spiegel never published anything that conclusively proved that latter scenario though although it was clear Etiahd wasn't paying the full sponsorhip out of its own pocket. There were references to 'His Highness' which was taken by Der Spiegel and other jounralists to mean Sheikh Mansour but that wasn't correct. As I said, 'HH' without qualification would be Mohammed bin Zayed and there's absolutely no way someone like someone like Simon Pearce would get something like that wrong or allow someone else to. I'm told by someone who should know that it's even quite a serious breach of protocol. This is quite important as it shows that MBZ, rather than ADUG/Sheikh Mansour, was arranging the money.

In summary, if Etihad is deemed a related party by UEFA but also that the sponsorship represents market value, then there should be no issue, regardless of how the money was sourced. Even if the other companies were deemed related parties and their sponsorships weren't deemed market value, at worst we'd have knocked our revenue down a bit and we'd have failed FFP by £10m more, which isn't significant and doesn't justify the new investigation in my view. Particularly as the 2014 settlement had already been over this ground. So we can assume it's not about that per se therefore.

The most likely explanation is that UEFA is accusing us of hiding the fact that the sponsorships weren't fully funded by the companies involved, which it didn't know in 2014 (but the information was there, in the public domain so you could argue that it was a known fact that Etihad weren't responsible for the full funding of our sponsorship). But if they were related parties, as claimed by UEFA seemingly, then as I said above, it doesn't matter.

If they weren't related parties, which we and our auditors claim, then it's potentially more of a case. I said at the time that it would have been the clever move to accept that they were related. But UEFA would need to prove that the money came directly from ADUG and not from other sources within Abu Dhabi, which is why the definition of 'HH' is is quite crucial. If Etihad paid us £50m in one or more remittances and all but the reported £8m came direct from ADUG then we'd possibly have a problem, although it's far from certain. If however Etihad paid that full money to ADUG and it was sourced from somewhere else other than ADUG then it's none of their business.

What would land us in the shit is if UEFA could see separately identified remittances of £8m from Etihad and £42m from ADUG both booked as commercial income under the Etihad sponsorship arrangement. But if that was the case, they'd have seen that at the time of the 2014 investigation presumably.

Thanks for that, always good to have your input.

So if I you are correct and they aren't claiming those sponsorships are related parties but instead that they haven't been paying the full amount. We still have to work out why they stopped at 2016 presumably.

Also for the last paragraph, I agree, I'd have thought both UEFA and City would have spotted that too and this wouldn't have taken long at all if the accounts showed that. We wouldn't even be challenging it at all in my view.

 

[mixer]

I've read some of our (Juve) forum reactions and even we, who are technically your CL rivals, know there's still the CAS appeal to be had and that this decision isn't necessarily what is really going to happen. So I wouldn't start to panic. You'll have your chance at appealing to a serious independent court, which is something very valuable and not to be taken for granted.

In any case, a strong team with a strong management at its core can, in due time, overcome any difficulty and setback thrown their way. Trust me on this.

As for the CL, maybe the threat of not competing in it next year will make the team perform with more hunger in the current one.
I know we don't stand a chance of making it to the final this year, so I wouldn't be particularly opposed to seeing you win it instead of Real, Barça, PSG or Liverpool. I just hope it'll be a better final than last year tbh.

I hope your right re CAS as we are been flogged by the cartel clubs who want it all for themselves as for winning the champs league this year - have you heard of VAR ?

 

[shemnel]

You've missed the fact that there's already a pretty comprehensive thread on this. ;-)

ive tried with that 1300 page monstrosity, is there a specific thread re emails?

 

[blueinsa]

Told you last night mate, they don’t care about peddling lies. Trial by media done and dusted.

Yet there is no media agenda.....nope......all in our heads.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Does anyone think our owner will think ‘Fuck it, I’ve had enough. The bastards have won’?

At least he never got bored.

 

[purplenose]

Does anyone think our owner will think ‘Fuck it, I’ve had enough. The bastards have won’?

It might come to that but only after an incredibly tough, long drawn out battle. I can’t see him throwing the towel in and moving on right now but the exact opposite.

Dependant on what legal conclusions come from this then I think there is a danger of not only our owners saying fuck this for a lark, but other owners with aspirations of challenging the cartel clubs. I think other would be investors such as those apparently interested in Newcastle will be watching very carefully. An awful lot is at stake here and it goes far beyond Manchester City. Those certain clubs have wanted their closed shop European Super League. This is where we find out if they are going to get it.

 

[BlueMoonz1977]

We will expose the agenda and the blind eye for the cartel

Game on.

 

[NMB]

Worst case scenario I think we get 1 year ban starting 2021 after competing next season while the CAS case goes on. This won't kill us or cause players to leave or not come- all our rivals have missed out in recent years and still been able to sign the likes of Pogba and Maguire. Plus the new manager in 2021 can concentrate solely on the domestic treble to give him a flying start.

 

[Rammy Blue]

Yet there is no media agenda.....nope......all in our heads.

It’s always been the way with us since 2008, any incident in a game always glorified until action is taken, etc etc

 

[Corky]

This is never going to end now. Whoever comes 5th and possibly 7th or 8th could appeal if City win their CAs appeal, and there is not way it will be close to an end before next season starts, unless it is a negative decision for City and City then take it on the chin.

It is not about fair value anymore, it is whether or not city 'lied', and will be open to interpretation.

Those wanting to bet a R. Madrid qualifying, jump on 17/10, city still big favourites. It is a good price for RM given relative form without all this going on.

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

Does anyone think our owner will think ‘Fuck it, I’ve had enough. The bastards have won’?

It might come to that but only after an incredibly tough, long drawn out battle. I can’t see him throwing the towel in and moving on right now but the exact opposite.

The real shame is that any club, not currently under American ownership, now knows that they’ve got no chance whatsoever of ever getting to the top table. Newcastle, Everton, Spurs can all now stop dreaming of getting jet propelled into the rarified atmosphere inhabited by the teams playing in red. Everton getting into the CL one year and getting a patronising pat on the head will be fine, them spending cash and getting in every season on the other hand, will simply not be allowed.
If the Saudis are really looking at the bar-codes, given this news, why would they bother?
One thing I will say for FFP is that it has stopped any English clubs going out of business and hasn’t allowed clubs to be ‘bought’ using huge amounts of leveraged debt!!